Born To Die (Alvarez & Pescoli)

“Eli!” She slammed her knee against and old cedar chest as she raced to the hallway, then flew frantically down the stairs. The flashlight’s faint beam bobbed and wobbled, casting shadows.

Around the corner and into the living area she ran, where the fire crackled and hissed and the corners were cloaked in darkness.

“Eli?” she said, her voice sounding loud, even echoing as the wind battered the house. “Honey?”

But she saw no one on the main floor.

Not Eli.

Not Trace.

Not the dogs.

But she felt a presence ... Something different, like the scent of fresh, night air clinging to the darkness.

Don’t do this. Don’t freak yourself out.

In a flash, the night she was attacked in the parking garage, sizzled through her mind. Brutal images of pain and fear.

Pull yourself together! Keep searching!

Where the hell is Trace’s son?

Bracing herself, nearly wincing as she passed gloomy corners, she pushed herself through the kitchen and into the stairwell. The steps to the cellar squeaked and her nostrils filled with the dry smell of dust that had collected from years of neglect. Whispery fingers tickled her cheek. “Oh!” She nearly stumbled down the remaining steps as the cobweb brushed against her face and clung to her hair.

Quieting her racing heart, she scraped the barest of light from her flashlight over stacked firewood, the scent of raw cedar faint in the cold space where more old furniture and tools had been left to gather dust.

The flashlight was fading but she forced its thin stream of light under the stairs, and across shelves where old canning glassware and boxes of insecticides hid.

Scccrrratttch!

She nearly dropped the flashlight as a mouse, its eye catching the fading light scurried quickly into a crack in the concrete wall.

“Oh . . God . . . damn! Eli!” she called again, but heard nothing other than the pounding of her heart and somewhere far off, the sound of chains rattling in the wind and that nerve-stretching thunk, thunk, thunk of a branch pummeling the house.

She hated dark spaces, had all of her life. No, that wasn’t true. Her real fear of the dark had come after the attack, when her assailant had sprung from the shadows.

Again, a horrid memory flashed through her mind and in that instant her knees nearly buckled. She grabbed hold of a post bolstering the stairs for support and in so doing dropped her flashlight. It rolled away, the light drunkenly spinning across forgotten chairs, exposed beams overhead and a wall of ancient, dirty cement.

Don’t think about him. Push the attack out of your mind! It’s over.

But now that the image was planted, she couldn’t forget her assailant, how his hard, angry body had been as it pressed her to the concrete, how he’d smelled of some faint aftershave mingled with sweat and a trace of cigarette smoke. He’d been so big and strong ... built like ... the men she’d met today, her brothers! Some of them had that same strong, athletic build. Hadn’t she thought of Judd as a football player, and even Lance, Clarissa’s husband, had that same primal, nearly jungle cat–like quality?

The others?

What about Robert or Thane or the twins?

And they all had those cold blue eyes.

Heart pounding, breathing in shallow gasps, feeling the taste of fear in the back of her throat, she slid down the post, then crawled to the flashlight, scooped it up and after giving herself a quick mental shake, struggled to her feet.

You have to find Eli!

Shaken, she pulled herself together. Up the stairs she climbed.

Maybe he’d gotten out of bed and followed Trace to the barns. Perhaps he’d been disoriented . . . hadn’t he called her “Mommy”? There was a chance the medication had caused him to sneak downstairs and outside ...

How?